A variety of electrical connectors are designed for surface mounting to a printed circuit board by soldering lead wire terminals of the connectors to circuit traces on the surface of the printed circuit board. Conventional soldering methods are not used, but reflow soldering methods are used for mounting the terminals to the board.
As for the connectors themselves, the surface mount connectors often are of a receptacle-type, and a plug-type connector is mated with the surface mounted receptacle connector. The plug connector may be terminated to lead wires, or the plug connector also may be surface mounted to a second printed circuit board whereby, when the plug and receptacle connectors are mated, an electrical connection is made between two different circuit boards. Of course, other interconnecting systems are contemplated by the invention.
One of the problems often encountered with electrical connectors of the character described above concerns the design of the connector terminals. Problems continue to arise due to the ever-increasing miniaturization of the electronic circuit within which surface mount connectors most often are used. The terminals usually are stamped from sheet metal material and formed or bent into a desired configuration. For instance, a terminal may be stamped or formed into an L-shaped configuration, with one leg of the "L" forming a male terminal pin in the connector housing, and the other leg forming the surface mount portion of the terminal for soldering to a circuit trace on the printed circuit board. If a plurality of such terminals are mounted to the connector housing in a common orientation, a force imbalance is created, particularly in a single terminal row connector. Therefore, adjacent terminals are alternatingly oriented or are placed on alternate sides of the connector to give the connector stability on the printed circuit board. These requirements increase the manufacturing and assembly costs of the connectors.
Other surface mount terminals are assembled to a connector housing, and then formed by secondary bending operations. Again, these additional fabricating steps increase the costs of the connectors.
This invention is directed to solving these problems by providing an improved surface mount terminal stamped and formed from thin sheet metal material, the terminal being symmetrical, more easy to assemble and less expensive to manufacture, with the terminal providing excellent board stability and requiring no secondary bending operations.